Discussion (63) ¬

But they only work within the confines of the building. They are useless beyond that. I have a lanyard for my workplace so they can see where all I go through the day, but the minute I walk 5 feet past the main entrance I’m untraceable.

Not trying to guess Aita’s situation, but such things have been used to monitor people who have conditions like bad diabetes (the chip monitors blood sugar levels), who might not be able to get help for themselves, if something happens – the chip can then be sending signal received by an external device, which can send an alert forward, if the blood sugar level goes past certain set limits.

Oh, and some party people have them as VIP cards, though usually in the arm, not not leg.

I’m a cybernetics researcher, and, wanting to know how living with it works, I had my such things implanted, opting for human trial on myself. Easier to write code when you’re familiar with the hardware.

Originally, the RFID chip in my hand was so that my wearable could ID me (so it couldn’t be stolen, or if it was, data extraction would be significantly more difficult). I would up getting an “antenna”-styled RFID in my thigh for longer range things (similar to RFID antenna cards for parking/transit, just without the card) later.

And now I’m sad…because we’ll never live in the old Shadowrun world of cranial interface datajacks and decks the size of keytaurs…instead it’ll be wireless sub-dermal implants connecting to a handheld tablet.

the only problem i can forsee is that a rfid receiver can be used without your knowledge and could in theory read your data and identify who you are and your precise location. this could give some more unscrupulus persons the ability to track you, learn about you and possibly harm you or atleast hack your accounts as the rfid chip probably has legal information such as legal names and other identifiers if you wanted it to ID you. with that infor some could look you up and find such things as your workplace or home address. from there i can only geuss at the things those depraved minds would come up with.

So he doesn’t have the nerve to keep pushing to track everyone else’s kids after learning he’s been forcing the entire school to put up sith his monster of a child. I suppose maybe I judged him to harshly, but still, he needs to be punished. (Anyone know how to make text slanted on an iPhone?)

But this page’s code probably doesn’t support that (your /this/ wasn’t italicized). When unable to use page code, I usually either use capital letters for a single word, or combinations of – and _ and whatever else I can, to make it stand out.

Yet there is still a difference between “bully” and “monster”. Truck *is* behaving monstrOUSLY, but he is NOT a monster himself.

On the other hand, the good professor still has a lot to learn about parenting, and I do not see this as persecution per se. I mean, his response at learning his child was the perpetrator all along was to shove him to a therapist who proceeded to humiliate the kid. Trunchypoo hasn’t yet been shown to be self-reflective or acknowledge that he may have had a role in his child’s development into being a bully (and indeed, he has had such a role). Even Truck has at this point realized what he’s done is wrong (even if it was through forcible methods – and to be sure, we’ll only see proof of that if he remains reformed and doesn’t return to his old ways).

Or, alternately: on discovering that his son was not who he thought, Trunchypoo did the responsible thing — as Todd suggested — and got him professional help, recognising that this was not something he could fix on his own. And where exactly do you get the idea that the therapist humiliated Truck? He broke the boy’s worldview, yes, so that Truck feels off-kilter, but what was he supposed to do, NOT point out that Truck’s worldview was wrong?

Getting expert help is not shoving the kid at someone and washing your hands of him; it’s acknowledging there’s a problem and hoping to fix it. When you take your car to a mechanic to have it fixed, it doesn’t mean you don’t care about the car anymore, or that you don’t accept that maybe you shouldn’t be driving quite so fast.

While I recognize that we never got a look at what the therapy session was like, based on how Truck talked to Selkie about it, it seemed to me (and maybe I’m wrong) like he yelled at Truck more than *helped him see where he was wrong*. Yes, Truck needed redirection; you OBVIOUSLY DO point out he was wrong – but unless other methods have been proven to have failed, as far as therapy goes you should always try the gentle approach/the approach helping them SEE their errors *on their own* first, before yelling; and it goes doubly so for child patients.

But because I also have experience with parents IRL unfortunately shoving their kids at a therapist essentially asking the therapist to “fix my kid”, without recognizing their own potential roles in the problem – i.e. the creation of a dysfunctional household. While Trunchbull did the first STEP correctly by getting his son to therapy (though his choice of therapist may have been an issue, that we haven’t seen yet), I have yet to see evidence that he has considered his own harmful role, or even the *possibility* of his having a harmful role, in things. To use your analogy, he has taken the car to the mechanic, yes – but we have yet to see him acknowledge that he shouldn’t drive so fast.

His defense to Todd, all along, was “I love my son; I know he wouldn’t lie to me”. He’s now discovered that his son was lying to him, and that Truck had no idea of what he actually went for. That’s a start.

I’d say this — http://www.selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie500/ — gives at least as much credence to the idea that Trunchypoo’s learned as anything else, with the look on his face and the “We’ve got a lot to talk about”. After Trunchypoo yells at Truck in the office, he calms down — he’s clearly trying to get the poitn across to Truck when he points out that Truck tried to hit a teacher.

I don’t know, it just seems you’re very vehement about this on very little evidence. Based on the entirety of the rest of the strip, I’m more inclined to believe that Trunchpoo’s getting it — not unlike how everyone expected Ken and Barbara to be absolutely awful, and yet it turned out that in their somewhat appalling way, they were doing things right.

Like a lot of people here, I’m commenting based on personal experience, so maybe I’m harsh on parents who *seem* to not acknowledge their own role in things. I believed I’ve stated several times/in several ways that we haven’t seen evidence of Trunchypoo realizing how he could have had a hand in his son’s behavior/development, YET. I didn’t think it needed to be said, but the corollary to that is that he MAY HAVE ALREADY reached the appropriate conclusions and we just haven’t seen it. Hell, maybe he’s going to talk to Todd about it in private after the meeting’s over or something. On the other hand, there ARE parents IRL who do shove their kid onto a therapist (just as there are parents who genuinely do the right thing). I’m simply voicing my fear that Trunchy may have done so, regardless of what he thinks of it in this moment in webcomic time.

On the other hand – I feel like I’m trying to be reasonable here, and that we actually agree on a lot of things. For example, that therapy was the right first step (regardless of whether it was the right therapIST) and that Trunchy’s come a long way from where he STARTED. I don’t mean to attack anyone, I just mean to discuss that Trunchy’s just not *done* yet. And did I not say that I DON’T think he should be jailed or killed? Also, just because Truck ACTS like a bullying monster doesn’t mean he IS one. That’s unfairly demonizing; and like all of Dave’s characters, Truck is, ultimately, a complex person with (a LOT of) issues.

I don’t feel like I’m being vehement, necessarily; I’m pretty sure I was just trying to stress that characters in this comic still have psychological work to do, based precisely on the lack of evidence in the first place. I AM starting to feel attacked based on minutia. We all view the world, and entertainment media including webcomics, through our own lenses that are tinted by our own experiences. I would appreciate if this were taken into account before my views or thoughts, which I have already tempered with relativity (i.e. Trunchy’s actions do not merit death, but they *could* merit plot-pokes), were automatically lambasted.

And for the record, comic #521 is where Truck talks about the therapy session. “He said I don’t think other kids are as big a deal as me… and he said it like it was a really bad thing…”

Even the commenters on that one thought the therapist was being kinda harsh based on the way Truck talked about the experience. It’s unprofessional as a therapist to smash a person’s erroneous worldview with a hammer; what a therapist is *supposed* to do, from the beginning and as long as is possible, is give them a mirror and nudge them into realization that the reflection isn’t so good. And not only is it unprofessional to hammer-smash instead, it’s damaging – particularly for children, who are still trying to make sense of the world around them, and in most cases (not necessarily including Truck here, because I genuinely don’t know) just added the numbers wrong, so to speak.

While Truck does deserve, for his own sake, to realize how much trouble he’s caused and to have his worldview changed, it should NEVER be done the way this therapist seems to have done so.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound as though I were accusing you or anything; I sometimes forget that vocal tones are not transferred well over the internet.

I still think it’s a bit out of line to accuse the therapist of anything when we haven’t seen how s/he actually interracted with Truck What I got from 521 personally was mostly confusion on Truck’s part. The therapist told him that he didn’t see the others as equals, which is clearly true, based on the whole ‘You don’t tell a Trunchbull what to do’ thing. The confusion on Truck’s part (again, as I read it) was the idea that ‘this was a really bad thing’ — it’s not that he denied the charge, it’s just that he’d never heard anyone suggest that treating others as insects was wrong. Ir struck me as Truck noticing the therapist’s tone more than the therapist actually attacking him.

Anyhow, I think the script of 558 that Dave posted reinforces my point of view more than yours, but that’s not a canonical part of the script, so there you are.

Again, sorry if I seemed to be attacking you personally in anyway. Not at all my intent.

No, no, no. He doesn’t need to be put down. The next logical step would be to have a buick pull up in front of him and a bunch of circus midgets pop out and each take one shot to his junk.

As for the RFID tags, since we don’t have a long term study on the full effects on anyone receiving them, no it is NOT a good plan. I would be fighting this tooth and nail. No one is going to put a chip into my child without their consent so they can track him/her on behalf of a controlling pair of bullies. And before you get after me, it was proposed while Trunchy was still in Professor Condenscendingpants and we haven’t seen his wife’s behavior so until then, she’s still the same.

Grain of salt because wikipedia, but apparently outside of America tableing things means to end the issue’s discussion (“remove it from the table” instead of “leave it on the table for later”). So there may be some confusion.

The thing about it that seems most worrisome to me is that if this becomes a common practice it’s going to result in children being raised to feel that being tracked everywhere, all the time, electronically, is perfectly normal. Another unwary step towards a surveillance society that has jettisoned the notion of personal privacy in the name of… efficiency? economy? safety from shadowy unspecified dangers?

It took me a minute but thats the principle in the bottom left frame and he does not look worried. Heck he looks furious; I wonder how he will defend himself. I sort of think he might try to shift the blame towards selkie and todd.

One could argue that if he called attention to the phone, that’d also end up directing attention toward the circumstances that led to it coming in handy. Plus, Todd isn’t exactly standing alone here- Agent Brown seems to be on side, and I’ve got a feeling the good agent knows how to play hardball harder than Ashton ever will.

Trunchbull seems like he legitimately learned his lesson lately — that he can’t just blindly trust and defend his son, and that he has to look at the situation and really accept how it is. He gets so many respect points back in my book.

On the other hand, he still doesn’t seem to recognize even the possibility of his being partially at fault for this – or at least, he hasn’t been shown to. So, he’s come a long way, but he’s not done yet, I think.

Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first time we’ve seen Trunchypoo since he left with Truck after finding out about him. Where exactly has there been an opportunity for us to see what he has or hasn’t learned?

The problem with lanyards is that they can easily be set somewhere, or carried by someone else. “Hey, dude, I’ll give you a dollar if you carry my lanyard around with you so it looks like I’m in all my classes tomorrow.”

Plus, these are little kids. Lanyards will get lost, or left at home, or on the bus. Kids will swap lanyards, or steal them, or put them on a dog, which will then run away. The idea just seems unworkable to me.

personally i think people use “i was bullied myself” or “i was abused myself” as an excuse to get other people to pity them or give them sympathy rather than force them to stop their bad behavior. People who are truly and genuinely bullied or abused know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that behavior and generally don’t want to inflict it on others. That’s why you often find people who were severely abused as children making the conscious decision not to have children of their own, or if they do have them, they attend parenting classes and read books about how to be a good parent and they generally do not actually turn out to be abusers.

The National District Attorney’s Association Bulletin reported a study in which child sexual abusers were surveyed. When asked if they had been sexually abused as children, 67% said yes. When the researcher then said he was going to hook the men up to a lie detector and ask again, then suddenly the percentage dropped to 29%. In other words, abusers generally claim that they were abused only when they think they can use it to get away with the abuse that they are perpetrating.

Not necessarily, Rainne. I was on both sides of the bully coin as a kid: bullied in Grade school, tried to be a bully in middle school, got straightened out in high school (and have since been well adjusted and happy as a clam). It’s about wanting to feel powerful or in control of your environment (specifically, the people in it). Some bullied folks learn “bullying sucks”; others learn “I should be scarier so they’ll leave me alone” (the latter was me). That doesn’t mean every bully has a sob story, of course; some just want power for its own sake, but there, I have much less first-hand knowledge.

Seconding this. I have a personal story I’d rather not share, but I can definitely assert that some do it for the sole purpose of at least not being on the bottom of the social totem pole.
I’m just as certain, however, that some awful folks SAY they were bullied as a cover for their derisive behavior. Take a girl who was president of a club I was in in college…
But what matters most is, ultimately, one is responsible for their own actions; even if you were bullied yourself that doesn’t excuse you, it’d kinda be following an eye-for-an-eye philosophy.

A philosophical world view, seeing things as one wishes…I remember reading news reports saying the perpetrators of the Columbine Massacre were guys who were bullied. I had my suspicions at the time, and later information confirmed it—those guys weren’t bullied, they *were* the bullies.

I’m talking about someone who was bullied and then bullied back as a way of defending themselves. I used Hey Arnold as an example because Helga was neglected by her parents and tormented by Harold when she was in preschool. Harold made fun of how she looked and dressed, shoved her and stole her lunch then ate it in front of her. She started to cry and then got angry and shoved Harold back, called him a name and threaten to hit him.

So was she really wrong or just defending herself which then turned into a coping mechanism to try and deal with her shitty life? No friends and neglectful, hell, they were even mentally and emotionally abusive parents.

I feel like that’s not really a bully, that’s a sad, scared little girl who has no one to help her in the world. Hell, she was in preschool. What else was she supposed to do but imitate the person picking on her? She didn’t have parents to go to.

I feel like no one ever truly knows anyone’s circumstances and life and condemning a person makes you pretty much just as bad as they are. Sure maybe you don’t bully back, but you certainly will judge them and possibly even wish nasty things upon them because you feel like they deserve it.

Often times people who were bullies in school feel terrible about what they’ve done and are haunted by it. Do they deserve that? Because they made a mistake? A mistake they now deeply regret? Bullies don’t all grow up into criminals and psychos you know. Tons of them grow up, get married and are nice people who contribute to society and legitimately feel bad about what they’ve done.

So think about what the other person may be suffering before assuming they’re just a spiteful dick with no emotions or a ‘monster’

Bullies are people too and we don’t always know why they’re doing what they’re doing. If anything, I felt sad for people who picked on me, because they never truly had any friends.

Here’s an even better story. I had a boss who tormented me every day. Called me fat, smelly and ugly. Every day I went home and showered for hours. Washed my uniform multiple times in one day. Asked my coworkers if I smelled bad. I didn’t. Day in and day out he tormented me.

I found out later that during that time, the store we worked at was going bankrupt. I quit before the store went under, but he stayed until the end. His wife, who cheated on him, divorced him, took him for everything he had, married the guy she cheated with, took custody of their 3 year old son who my boss loved, adored even, and moved 4 states away.

My boss had visitation rights, but tell me, how is an unemployed person supposed to travel 4 states away on a daily basis?

I found out that the boys stepfather raped him for years. Raped a 3 year old boy. My boss found out and commit suicide.

Did he deserve that? Hell no. His world was crumbling around him. It was no excuse to torment me, but I understand why he did What he did no.

To go even further with this, I did really despise my boss for how he picked on me. I really dreaded going to work on the days I knew he was there. I was especially upset with his mistreatment since I was a good employee. We had these stupid monthly cards and magazine subscription quota we had to fill. I hated them. Everyone hated them. But I was always well above my quota. We were lucky to get even 1 magazine subscription a day. I got 5 per day. My boss wouldn’t even praise me for that. He’d make snide comments about how I was at least working hard to make up for other areas. It hurt. Some days I left in tears. No one deserves that, but I stuck with it. I was 16 and I needed this job. It taught me hardship and taught me the world is not sunshine and rainbows and I could either run away crying to hide or deal with it. I chose to deal with it.

Now don’t get me wrong I tried to anonymously get supervisors and other people in the company to see how he treated me, but when he found out about that he made it worse for me. Eventually I ignored him outright and his comments lessened over time.

Was he ever nice to me? Nope. Did I hate him? Yeah, sometimes I truly did. Was I happy when I found out he had a miserable life? Absolutely not. I cried for him. I felt so had for him. All my hate faded away and I felt nothing but forgiveness and understanding.

Maybe not everyone feels this way, but I’m much happier forgiving and letting things go rather than dwelling and let spite and hate fester inside me.

Actually the assistant manager told me. She knew his wife and was good friends with her. The assistant manager contacted me through Facebook and told me about it and thought it, “Might make you feel better to know that jackass is dead and gone.” because she saw how he tormented me. It didn’t make me feel better at all. She never helped, so I find her more guilty than he was in all honesty. Especially that she seemed pleased that he died. He wasn’t a nice man, but he did love his son very, very much. He was a father. A little boy lost his father and gained an abusive one. The rape thing I found out through a news article. The assistant manager just told me about the suicide and the divorce. She tried really hard to paint the cheating thing in a good light, but cheating is cheating to me. Oddly enough, he moved to the same state as I did a few year’s later and killed himself in a town not very far from mine.